


Family Experiments

by Docile



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst and Humor, Clones, Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Romance, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Protective Hulk, SHIELD Agent Riley Finn, Science Experiments, Self Confidence Issues, Slow Build, Superfamily, Teacher Phil Coulson, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Docile/pseuds/Docile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Xander is away from Sunnydale, a failed abduction puts him on SHIELD's radar in a big way.  Standard shield testing brings unexpected results, and he learns his origins may be somewhat more bizarre than even he is prepared for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Natural Talent

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Marvel/Buffy AU, but it's pretty Buffy-lite. Demons won't feature heavily in the story because they are a phenomenon of the Hell-mouth, as is the Slayer. Also, even though the swim team debacle is a key story point, Xander has known Buffy for less than a year.

_"Of all the bad ideas I've ever had,"_  Xander Harris thought to himself, years of practice letting him snark internally while his body struggled desperately toward the far end of the pool, _"this was definitely one of them."_

To be fair, calling it an idea at all was rather generous.  It had been more of an instinct, feet automatically beating a path through the changing room lockers toward the pool.  Even if Xander hadn't just himself called the creature a lazy B-movie knockoff, his short tenure on the swim team hardly seemed enough explanation for the sense of calm and safety he felt when skin hit water.   As Xander fought his way desperately over to the other side, adrenaline urging his limbs faster, water whipping into a frothy mess all around him, he knew somehow that it hadn't been a mistake.  No one could catch him right now.  The water seemed to surge around him, rallying him farther away from the sad creature chasing after with sluggish, rubbery limbs and crude webbed feet.  For a moment, just a moment, He knew.  That monster, that kid that used to be his classmate, might be a failure, but if it had succeeded, if the coach had succeeded, it would be just like...

His hand smacked the pool edge, and with a perfectly fluid motion, trademark clumsiness notably absent, xander was out, standing, and facing back toward the pool.  The creature was thirty feet away and closing, but xander was inexplicably still, watching it.

_"Him.  That's Roy Cameron swimming in that pool, gills and all."_

Xander had seen a lot of dead bodies this past year, but this was somehow something much more disturbing.  This wasn't just another lifeless corpse.  This guy was alive in there, altered beyond recognition but still alive.  He...

 _"He..Is right in front of me."_  The monster's head popped out of the water, hissing at him in rage and annoyance.  Snapped out of his inappropriately timed Angel impersonation, Xander backed toward the pool entrance.

"Sorry Roy, nobody likes a sore loser."

When Xander met back up with the scoobies in the library, he told them what happened at the pool, leaving out the part where he wins the inter-species swim championship. The events at the pool had already taken on a fuzzy, unreal quality, and Xander didn't feel up to convincing anyone he wasn't crazy.  Caught up in the importance of dealing with the coach and rounding up the rest of the team, the issue of Xander's personal best swim time was left to sit on the back shelf of his mind.  By the time he was able to think about it, at home that night in his bed and trying to ignore his Dad's angry shouting downstairs, he decided Roy the gill-man must have been slowed down before he reached the pool.

_"I couldn't have out-swam that 'roid raging fish beast.  I couldn't even out-swim Cameron back when he was a real boy.  What is my life that my first jump from 'fast swimmer' is to compare myself to freak science experiments.  You have a bit of natural talent, and the world is shocked, but it's no big deal."_

Meanwhile, the one-sided argument downstairs had come to an end.  Mrs. Harris sat at the kitchen table, bourbon spilling down her chin as she drank it in hiccuping gulps.  Mr. Harris stood by, red faced and breathing heavily, but calming down.  The argument had come to it's natural conclusion, one sided from the beginning because both had known it was coming and both had known the only way it could end.  They had gotten a call - the call, the one they always knew they would get one day.  They hadn't had much choice from the start, and they had even less at this end.    The Harrises do what they always knew they were going to, regardless of any 'inadvisable attachments'.  They would do what they had to do - for themselves.  By now, it was all they knew.

"Give me that!" Tony Harris demanded, then immediately contradicted by snatching the bottle himself.  He took a large gulp, the liquid heat finally soothing the frayed edge his nerves had taken since first hearing that voice on the other end of the phone line.  "Start packing tomorrow, we leave Friday."


	2. A trip down memory lane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The big move doesn't go as planned - for anyone.

Xander’s world didn’t end with a bang, or a whimper, but with the snearing, cruel words of an alcoholic before his first day’s scotch. By now, he was used to dealing with unreality on a daily basis, but this was something else entirely.  It seemed impossible that after everything the Scoobies had faced together this last year, after fighting back the evils of the hellmouth time and time again, this was to be the thing that broke their group.

“We’re moving Friday,” his dad had said, in that calm offhand way that meant he was spoiling for a fight, “start packing your things.”

When Xander had tried to argue: he couldn’t just leave. What about his friends? What about school? He had things to do. He’d be missed. He was needed.

His father laughed. And then he struck.

“What friends? The only friend you had went missing last year” hit Xander like a sudden strike to the gut, leaving him completely off-balance for the barrage to follow.

“What, I should turn down a job offer because you’re busy leaching off some kids’ charity at school? Like they really need you hanging around that study group all the time, slowing them down, asking stupid questions and goofing off. Things’ll go better for them without you around, and they’ll realize that the minute you tell them. Now quit lazing around and help your mother pack.”

Somehow, Tony managed to hit every raw nerve he knew his son had in that ruthless assault, and a few others just by luck and proximity. Every argument and denial Xander had dried up in his throat. His fists were clenched and his eyes stung, humiliation eclipsing his rage, leaving him paralysed. His father had always had this power over him, boxing him with words until all he could do is stand there, stunned, hoping for mercy.

“That wasn’t a request, boy. Get to work.”

Mercy is not a harris trait.

 

-

 

Three days later finds Xander crammed into the backseat of his father's Ford Taurus with what his dad had claimed were the house essentials, but mostly consisted of a few boxes filled with a bunch of video tapes and some pictures.  Xander can't even find the will to make a snarky comment, some half formed thought about what his dad could use for toilet paper forming before he released it with a sigh.  His mind was still busy brooding over the farewell party that wasn't.

When Xander had told his fellow scoobies he was leaving, he wasn't sure what he had expected, except maybe  _More_. Willow at least seemed as sad to see him go as he felt at leaving, making him promise to call or write weekly, but the rest had been one big disappointment.  Buffy had wished him well like he was going away on holiday rather than leaving behind everything good in his life, and Giles had just stood there looking relieved of all things.  Then, before he could start demanding his privilege of cake-y birthday goodness, the hellmouth hiccuped.  Before you could say 'villain of the week', everyone was nose-deep into ancient prophecies and forgotten demons, without time to wish him more than a distracted goodbye on his final day in sunnydale.  What bothered him most, though, was the way Giles had hastily grabbed the book he'd been reading and started again from the beginning, as though he'd been just waiting for Xander to be done with it to give a proper read through.

_"I really was just slowing them down, wasn't I?"_

Xander looks out the window as he notices they are off the highway and pulling onto a dirt road seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  The road is flanked on one side by a large lake and the other by dense forest.  Xander isn't much of a country person, outside of perhaps the music he is suddenly craving, but at least he'll be able to swim in the summer.  He trains his eyes across to the opposite bank, looking to see what the other houses around here are like, and is confused when he realizes there aren't any.

Some niggling feeling at the back of Xander's mind, born of hellmouth bred paranoia, makes him ask, "Uh, dad, what did you say your new job was again?"

"Construction," is Tony's annoyed response.

_"Oh sure, construction.  That makes sense.  This is obviously an up and coming neighbourhood.  These trees don't just build themselves."_

Xander's hellmouth senses are tingling.  The niggling feeling has worked its way up to a full on wiggins.  Something weird is going on, and his parents are barely even trying to hide it.  He's working his way up to doing something stupid, like throwing himself from a moving vehicle, when the Taurus rounds a corner and a building comes into view.  It doesn't look like much, small and squat with peeling grey paint.  Xander reads the name on the front, ENFIELD INSTITUTE, and falls into himself.

He remembers this place.  He remembers featureless metal floors and bright, white lights.  He remembers the hateful machines with all their agitated beeping, attached to him and sucking fluid out of him in steady pulses.  He remembers the endless parade of lab coats and dispationate faces, talking around him. "It seems to be healthy today."  "It's ready to be placed as soon as a suitable couple is brought on board."  He remembers screaming to himself while strapped down on a table, a harsh burning light eating through his skin, instinct telling him to  _Pull_  but unable to fight the restraints.  He remembers the only respite, his tank, where he was free to sleep in the safety of dark and water.

Xander climbs out of his memories as the car stops in front of the ugly building, half a dozen people already out and hurrying toward them.  Two of them are labcoats, and a shiver rolls down his spine, but they aren't the threat right now.  The other four are large, muscular, and not even bothering to hide the guns they carry.  A second after the car stops, Xander's door springs open and feet hit gravel, pebbles spraying as legs slide and recover.  He makes it five steps before a weight is hitting his back, pushing him down.  His arm is jerked behind him and a solid weight is on top of him, making it impossible to move without doing himself injury.  Knowing what's to come, Xander tries anyway, thrashing in his limited space, not even stopping with the agonized wrench that means he's dislocated his arm. It isn't even a shadow of what waits for him inside.

There's a sudden sting in his neck, and his muscles start to quiet down without his permission. His legs fall to the ground, and his arms and back go slack.  When he finally stops moving altogether, he's picked up and carried toward the building.

_"I can't go back in there."_

Xander wills his body to strike, to fight, to push them off, but his arms only dangle uselessly at his sides.  He wants to struggle, to pull his legs out of the arms holding him up, to snap his head against this goon's stupid, smirking face. His efforts aren't even noticed as he's brought through shoddy wooden doors into a spotless modern interior, familiar gleaming metal floors and white walls mocking his futile attempts with remembered helplessness.

_"I'll die before I let them use me like that again."_

The short hallway ends in a large service elevator, easily fitting everyone who has come inside, which Xander manages to note doesn't seem to include his parents.  There are three buttons, colour coded by primaries rather than numbers.  One of the labcoats puts his ID card in a slot underneath and presses the blue button, and they descend. When the elevator opens again, it reveals a long narrow hallway packed with steel doors and alpha-numerics.  Somehow Xander knows the one on the end, 3-9-BANNER, is his.  He's still trying to struggle, but the adrenaline is wearing off, and his mind is starting to fog.  He can't remember why anymore, but he knows he needs to pull.  His limbs aren't working, but he barely registers that anymore, straining anyway.

Xander's mind catches on something in its urgency, something movable like muscles but distant and weak.  Something that fear and desperation make strong.

Xander pulls. _  
_

And the building around him shudders, pipes groaning and metal creaking.  Half his entourage has stopped moving, shocked, while the other half are running around trying to assess the problem. Xander's consciousness is drifting, his body pushed far beyond its limits, overtaxed by adrenaline and paralytic and this nameless exertion.  Sleep calls to him, promising him a reprieve, but he knows no rest waits for him behind that smooth steel door.

Xander  _pulls._

The shuddering builds to a scream as the walls break open, pipes bursting through and unleashing a torrent of water.  When a deep rumble from beneath them causes the laboratory to shake, Xander's old friends seem to reach a consensus, backpedaling to the elevator and furiously jabbing at an uncooperative button.  The water continues to rise, and the muscle tries to pry the doors apart, arms straining futilely against elevators designed to lock out intruders.  They bang and scream at the elevator in impotent rage, but the cool metal is as unmoved now as it was back then.   When the water reaches waist height the lights go out, and the labcoats join in on the screaming.  They keep screaming, and banging, and screaming, until they stop. The water is all around Xander now, and the hands fall away from him.  Finally free, he gives in to exhaustion.

It is wet, and dark, and safe.

-

When SHIELD arrives at the scene, they don't find a lab, they find ruins.  In the midst of those ruins, they find the reason for their alert.  There are a dozen bodies buried throughout the rubble, all long past expired, but there is something else as well: a teenage boy.  He's alive and well, a normal healthy sixteen year old as far as their instruments can tell, and he is suspended in a liquid sphere that seems particularly adverse to intrusion.  After several disastrous attempts to move the sphere, they give in and set up camp to study it at its current location instead, but whatever causes it is beyond even SHIELD's ability to comprehend.  Finally, after two days of unprecedented failure, one shield agent decides to call in their greatest resource.

"Agent Phil Coulson, authorization: Echo - Three - Five - Romeo - Oscar - Niner. Requesting permission to bring in primary assets. "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is really short, but I promise things pick up after this.


End file.
